We must ADORE this man. We should all get down on the floor and beg for forgiveness because we’re just not worthy enough. Most of us are second-rate art school drop-outs, pseudo-visionaries and cultural tourists riding on the back someone else’s genius. We only want to BE like Tim Burton because he was and (debatably) is THE dark ingénue, THE nocturnal caped crusader who opened the cellar door of our excruciating suburban existence and liberated our subconscious without us having to lift one wretched finger.

Tim Burton has turned us all into monsters. He fought deliberately hard to scribble his gothic signature onto our lump-less landscape of animated penguins. Now we’re all blood-thirsty for skulls and German necrophilia. We want BATS and we want to cloak ourselves in mourning dress to visit Tesco so we can buy vegetables and cigarettes and cans of petrol. We’re not asking for much.

Do you know anything about Tim Burton’s early life? You DO know he doesn’t just pop-up every Halloween with a re-run of The Corpse Bride, right? Because like Christ, this man has suffered on the celluloid cross for us.

Drawing cute puppy dogs for Disney was a nightmare for Tim - animating hideous monsters a dream. And thank god he pursued the latter. Positivity never worked for Burton. Desperate losses provoked him toward success. It was only when he LOST his scholarship that he produced his first pencil drawn cartoon Stalk of the Celery Monster (1979). The film stirred the attentions of Disney who stupidly offered Burton a job. Burton was set to work drawing pointlessly cute dogs rather than lurid beasts. The eccentric structure of his revolutionary lead began wasting away.

Stick Boy's Festive Season

All was not lost. Stehpen King liked Frankenweenie. It also offered Burton his first feature film work Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. Let’s ignore that and pretend it was Beetle Juice (1988) because we all know Beetle Juice was a far more interesting film. Today, minus a few hiccups, Burton holds the most singular vision of gothic gore, whimsy and hallucinogenic fictions.

Harpers Bazaar, May 2009

ust don’t forget Burton’s illustrations. Have you seen his drawings? Burton illustrates the tenderness of monsters, giving them familiar emotional pulses. In his mind, they’re misunderstood , irrationally feared and thus marginalized. He is after all a beneficent Anti-Christ, and such a sensitive soul ( just look at those eyes for god’s sake, they’re Draconian wells). These portraits of Giacomettian figures developed into 3D animations – notoriously The Nightmare before Christmas and The Corpse Bride.

Inevitably, fashion capitalized on Burton’s gothic estate by sinking their teeth into cheap logos, embellishments and gimmicky key fobs. Harper’s bazaar ignored such revolting souvenirs and instead paid homage in true Tim Walker style. Anticipating Burton’s retrospective at the New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Walker photographed “Tim Burton's Tricks & Treats” with Burton as one of the models.

So there you have it. The next time you’re encouraged to express your subconscious inner hulk at art school, give a prayer of thanks to the man who made it all possible. You can address your groveling letter of thanks to: